Work of Fiction

Yesterday's post was a work of fiction.  I've been doing well on the diet and aside from one terribly delicious Indian dinner, I've managed to stay on it and have continued to make progress.  But I needed a topic I could quickly write about to do a test for myself.

I dislike idioms.  That's not entirely true, I think idioms are great, but I don't think they're needed to write clearly or write well even.  I've been trying to watch my usage of idioms in verbal speech.  I wasn't sure if I used them a lot or not.  I do use them, but not as much as I thought I might.  But how easy (or difficult) is it to write intentionally using idioms?  As it turns out, it's very easy.

I picked dieting because it was a topic that's on my mind a lot, and it was a subject that lent itself well to the idioms that were coming to mind.  I was amazed that in five minutes, I had easily written a post that was heavily laden with idioms, sometimes two per sentence.  In just four small paragraphs, I go in thirteen.  I was surprised. 

Could I have written the same semantic content without the use of a single idiom?  Easily.  It's just how you approach writing.  I'm writing this blog, in part, to work on my writing.  This was an experiment to myself, and it was very interesting.

The Big Boy Update:  Abstract Ball.  My father bought a painting of a pink elephant for us to hang in the children's room.  Yesterday as I was finding a spot for it on the wall, my son pointed to it and said "ball."  He says ball a lot, but I looked at the painting and at the bottom, there was a strange looking large round ball.  I asked him what he was saying and brought the painting closer to him.  He pointed right to the ball and said "ball" again.  He's learning how to abstract three-dimensional things into two dimensional representations.  I was impressed.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  So Happy.  Last night we had one of those crazy thunderstorms you get from time to time.  It was a dark and stormy night as it were.  And it was accompanied by some very aggressive lightning that sounded like it was in the lot next door.  My husband went upstairs to check on a roof leak we found recently that had been prepared.  He also checked on the babies and said he had never seen my daughter so happy.  She was very awake, was waggling her arms and legs around vigorously and had the biggest grin on her face.  She is definitely not afraid of thunderstorms.

Right-size Countdown:  10.4 pounds to go